Hertz, who was born Feb. 22, 1857, experimented with electromagnetic waves and his findings led to the development of the wireless telegraph and the radio. Hertz died in 1894, but the hertz unit (Hz) was not established until 1930.

Google’s animation, which is an animated GIF, is the creation of Sophia Foster-Dimino, a Bay Area-based illustrator who joined the Google Doodle team in 2010, according to the Washington Post:

“For this Doodle, we chose to create a simple and elegant homage for Heinrich Hertz, whose research into electromagnetic waves contributed to the invention of the radio, television and radar,” Foster-Dimino tells Comic Riffs. “So extensive were his experiments that there’s a unit of frequency, the hertz, named for him — hence our wavy Doodle!”